


Nine Things That Never Happened to Wesley Wyndam-Pryce

by likeadeuce



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 06:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A radical alternate timeline after Season 3's 'Sleep Tight.'  Wesley goes on a road trip; Bruce Springsteen's album "Nebraska" provides the soundtrack and structure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nebraska

_ Me and her went for a ride, sir. . .innocent people died_

He sees the knife just in time to grab her wrist, twist her arm back, and put pressure on the nerve. Her wrist opens, involuntarily, and the blade thuds onto to the dirt. Wesley then hurls her forward, so she falls face-first. It isn't the most graceful move he's ever performed but then, he's never had to fight with a baby squeezed under one arm. The force of the move surprises him, because Justine is strong, and then he thinks what they say about bears, fighting harder when the cub's life is at stake.

He's gripping Connor so hard, the baby starts to wriggle and fuss. Wesley just squeezes tighter against the writhing form and remembers summer days spent clearing feral barn cats out of his mother's garden, because his father's solution was to have the gamekeepers shoot them, and all Wesley had ever gotten for his efforts was an arm scored with claw marks -- because anybody should know better than to try to make a cat do anything it didn't want to do, even if you were doing it to save the damn thing's life.

But Connor's not the wild, half-starved stray here. It's Justine, who doesn't try to get to her feet but stays on all fours and lunges for the knife. Wesley covers the blade with one boot, the slams the other down into Justine's back. Still holding the now-flailing infant, Wesley leans to lift the knife, sticks it into his own belt, then reaches and grabs the dazed woman by the collar and pulls her to her feet. "What the fuck are you playing at?"

She spits in his face. He drags her to the car and slams her head against the door; he's done this before but not to a human, not to a woman. He gasps, adrenaline surging, not quite letting through the thoughts, _She almost killed you, you almost died, she played a fucking damsel in distress and you almost fell for it_.

"Get in the car," he snaps, furious at her, but angry at himself too, for reasons he's not ready to examine. Wesley opens the passenger door, then hesitates for a moment because he's seen this in movies and isn't it the hostage who's supposed to drive? But he doesn't trust her behind the wheel, not with Connor in the car, and besides, he has a gun on his hip, a knife on his belt, and plenty of chains and cuffs in the back of the SUV. So he trains the gun on her and throws her the cuffs, forces her to chain her own arms behind the seat, and she's surprisingly good at it. Experience? he wonders, considering what he knows of Holtz. Satisfied that she can't wriggle away, he moves to the back, puts Connor in the car seat, and checks the restraints. In a moment he does the same for Justine, then ties her legs through the undercarriage of the seat. Wesley then throws a blanket over lap, and another on the back of the seat, so a casual observer looking into a moving vehicle, will merely think she's resting.

"That'll do for now," he grunts, and gets behind the wheel, and the kid is still screaming.

"Shut him up!" is all Justine says, but Wesley doesn't know how, so he just pulls into the street, observing traffic signs, and there's nothing strange about a couple driving down the street with a crying baby.

"If you make a noise at the wrong time, I'm not afraid to kill you," he says, in a even voice that won't upset the baby, and he realizes that he means it -- not only that he'll do it but that he isn't afraid. He reaches to the tape deck and flips on some music Angel gave him for baby emergencies. Bach played by a high pitched synthesizer, that offends everything in Wesley's aesthetic but Lorne swears by its soporific effects on the child, and soon Connor is asleep and they're on the highway.

"We have to listen to this shit all the way to Utah?" Justine says at last.

"Is that where Holtz said you were going?" Wesley answers evenly, aware that she hopes he'll give something away, that she'll escape or he'll let her go and she'll lead everyone to them. He almost says that he's heard Utah is full of religious fanatics, that Holtz is likely to fit in very well, and then he remembers that he's kidnapping his friend's child because of something he thinks he read in a scroll in an ancient language that no reputable scholar would recognize. Maybe he does belong in a land founded by men who declared themselves to be prophets.

But in truth, Wesley hasn't decided on an ultimate destination, perhaps superstitiously believing that if didn't plan that far ahead, he wouldn't have to go through with it. And anyway, it's good because Lorne may have seen into his mind, but he can't know a plan that Wesley hadn't made yet. _Assuming Lorne's still alive and functioning,_ but that's stupid, Lorne's had his head chopped off, Wesley's seen it, he'll survive a little knockout blow. _But you really don't' know do you?_ and then to take his mind somewhere else, he tries to come up with the name of a state, one of those flat ones in the middle. One answer that works as well as any other, as he plans to test out the wide empty anonymous spaces that the boy raised on an island always coveted about this far away nation.

"Nebraska," Wesley tells her, heading north on the highway out of Los Angeles. "I thought I might take him to Nebraska."


	2. Turning to Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wesley makes a stop on Las Vegas, and calls on a witch for a little help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics in this section are from the song "Atlantic City." This is the only chapter not named for a song from 'Nebraska'; geography dictated Vegas instead!

_We're goin' out where the sand's turning to gold  
Put on your stockings baby, `cause the night's getting cold_

 

If Willow ever needs to come up with a recipe for the Worst Day Ever, it might go something like this: _ Spend the morning helping your Best Friend, the one you crushed on for the first seventeen years of your life, prepare for his wedding to a woman you don't entirely trust; spend the afternoon waiting for Best Friend to show up for the ceremony before realizing he has skipped town; spend the evening consoling Best Friend's jilted fiancée – if, by consoling her, you mean, trying to talk her out of elaborate and disgusting vengeance spells; complicate consolation with your own barely-concealed desire to take elaborate and disgusting revenge on Best Friend for putting you in this spot in the first place. Top the whole experience off by coming home to an empty bed and a houseful of reminders that the woman _you_ love wants nothing to do with you. Or even worse, she wants to be "Friends." Because you're so damn good at friendship, you don't even know where Xander is right now._

And that's the moment when her cell phone beeps, and she picks it up to read the text message:

NEED HELP. MIDNIGHT @ TEMPLE BAR, CAESAR'S PALACE, LV. BRING LETHES BRAMBLE, CASH. BE ALONE. IT HAS TO BE YOU. TELL NO ONE. 

Willow steals a case of the plant from the Magic Box – who's paying attention? Giles? Anya? She's twenty miles up the road before she wonders if she's driving into some kind of trap. By Barstow, she knows she doesn't care. _It has to be you_, and it's been too long since she's been wanted for her talents – not scolded, feared, told she was dangerous and irresponsible. _I help people; that's why I learned magic in the first place_. Why doesn't anybody remember that?

She's never been to Las Vegas, though Amy suggested it once – before they got sidetracked with other things – and as Willow walks across the lobby, she tries not to think about the chaos that a couple of carefree witches could cause in a place like this. _Carefree, irresponsible, unethical, out of control witches,_ says her inner Giles; though it's not like her outer Giles seems to give much of a shit these days, what with leaving the country so they can fend for themselves. In the bar, she sees a few men in tuxes, with the collars up and ties undone, but none of them is Xander; she doesn't see him or anyone she knows at all, until there's a hand on her shoulder, and she thinks, _Oh shit, trap!_ and turns to see. . .

"Wesley!" In relief, she gives him a hug, though they don't exactly have a hugging kind of relationship. In fact, he looks stiff and startled in return. "Where is he?" she asks, and now he really looks blank and, for an instant, almost panicked. She starts to explain, _Xander_ but changes in time to "Angel?" It's Angel who needs her, of course; it's only secret because he doesn't want her telling Buffy because Buffy doesn't want Willow doing magic, because Willow doing magic is bad. But things are never as black and white to Angel; Willow learned magic in the first place to help Angel; everybody else might forget, but Angel doesn't.

"Angel's occupied," says Wesley, with that Watcher-ish it's-the-end-of-the-world urgency that Willow finds oddly soothing. "Do you have the items?" He holds out a hand, all business.

Willow gives him the package without another thought. "Be careful how you handle that," she teases, "You don't want to forget what you're doing here." And then, more seriously, "I got in some trouble with that stuff myself a while ago. Giles wasn't too happy –" Neither was anyone else, of course, but she has a hunch that she can win a little sympathy, and, indeed, the young ex-Watcher gives a knowing smile.

"I heard it through the grapevine," and you wouldn't think a man could say that sentence while sounding so entirely solemn. But then he says,"Giles," with just the slightest hint of an eyeroll -- as though he's the hardened, cynical field op, and Giles is the upper-class twit who never leaves a library. It takes Willow a moment to realize it's convincing, and another to wonder if it might even be true. Wesley is well-dressed, clean-shaven and, though his hair is longer than she remembers, impeccably groomed. But he's not the tailored James Bond wannabe she remembers either. There's something in the set of his jaw, the way he carries himself, that she can't quiet pinpoint. He's up to something, and he wants Willow to be part of it.

"Anything else I can do to help?" she asks.

"Just a tiny tweak on a locator spell," he answers. "I have the things upstairs and then. . ." He pauses, as though he's not sure whether he should continue. "And then, well -- only if you don't mind getting rich."

And now, because casino security must be as bad as airport security, where you can't even tell a joke, and because he's not Giles, and she wants him to see what she's learned to do, she looks at him, and she doesn't move her lips, and she sends him the words. _We gonna knock over a casino, Wes?_

His mouth curves into a smile of pure delight, and – this part is harder, because she's not a real reader, she can just pull the thoughts off the top of his mind, the ones he's sending her way – in a moment, there's an unmistakable reply; she can even hear it in Wesley's voice, _Something like that._ Out loud, he says, "I thought we might play a little poker."

"Oh." She pulls up short. So much for that. "I don't know how."

"That's all right. I know. I just need you to be my luck." And the same words rattle in her brain now, but not because he said them. _My very special kind of luck._

_That sounds like cheating._

_That's because it's cheating._

_But. . .for a good cause?_

_The best._

"This will help Angel," she says out loud, just to hear herself say it.

"More than you know." When she doesn't answer right away, Wesley adds, "Of course, if you think _Giles_ wouldn't. . ."

"Giles doesn't tell me what to do," Willow snaps.

Wesley smiles. "That's my girl."

For an odd second, Willow wonders what he _is_ up to, and then – to practice for what he's asking her to do, she looks at him, digs as deep as she can to see what thoughts he's sending her way and –   
Gets a flash that involves her changing outfits with the cocktail waitress, who seems to be dressed like a vestal virgin. "Wesley!" she scolds, getting out of his brain as quickly as she can. He blushes appropriately as she says, "You've got an interesting mind. And if you've been plugged into the grapevine, you know --" She shrugs. "Gay now?"

He steps back and spreads his hands. "I ensure you my intentions are honorable."

_Except for the cheating?_ Though since he has forced her to think about her clothes. "It's only –" Willow looks down at the slacks and peasant blouse she changed into after the wedding. "I've never been in a casino, does this look --?"

"You're all right. Just --" He's already moving on, not looking at her, as he calls over his shoulder, "Come up to my suite and you can, you know. Put some makeup on, fix your hair up pretty."

*

Apparently, there are well-established procedures for psychically assisted cheating at cards. Who knew? Well, Giles, probably, but he wouldn't have told her. She's not at all convinced that her limited reading gift is helpful, but Wesley assures her that gambling requires a very concentrated display of mental energy, that even surface readings can be a lot to go on. So Wesley gets in a game, and Willow does what she can to read the other players, and sends her insights on to Wesley. She screws up a few times, mistaking a strong bluff for a hidden truth, but Wes is good enough to hang in there on his own and, once she starts to get a feel for it, they're on fire.

He starts with some of the money she brought, and some of his own, and he's tripled it in an hour. After a big win on the last hand, Wesley stands up, announces he's cashing in his chips, and grabs Willow's shoulders to pull her into a kiss. _A hot streak,_ he thinks towards her, _But not enough to arouse suspicion. And as for why I'm walking away --_

"Ohh, sweetie," Willow purrs, "We just have to go celebrate somewhere – private?"

His arm around her shoulder. "My luck, ladies and gentlemen." There's a mirror across the lobby. She can't help thinking that they make a cute couple.

Then they go, and they do the same thing at the Bellagio. And then the Luxor, the Palms, the Suncoast, the Mirage; as dawn creeps up on them, they're flush with cash, Willow's head feels like it's been run over by a truck, and the end-of-game kisses are getting more interesting. They stumble into Wesley's room back at Caesar's, Willow takes off her shoes and sits on the bed, pressing a hand to her pounding temple. "Isn't this the part where we get naked and roll around in the money?" Her mind is in shreds, and she's mostly joking, but she sort of isn't, and she's long lost the careful mental control that verbal nonverbal communication requires; so she sends all of these thoughts his way, and then he sends his own back, thoughts she would roughly translate as: _Holy shit, she's not faking; how do I get out of this?_

"Wesley?" she frowns, willing her brain to get back in gear with normal, human, logical thinking, the kind she left several mindmelds back. "What's going on here? Why do you need all that money?"

"I can explain everything," he soothes. "Just relax for a moment. I'll make you some tea."

And that's so very very Watcherly of him, and Willow Rosenberg sits back to relax, and she's sure that, very soon, he will explain it all, and it will make perfect sense.

*

Willow wakes, afternoon light streaming through the window of the strange hotel room. Panic seizes her, but she feels for her clothes, and calms down as she assures herself they are undisturbed. In fact, they're the same ones she changed into since the wedding-of-disaster, which is the last thing she remembers. A look out the window shows the Las Vegas strip in broad daylight. The nighttable holds an empty coffee mug, a key card, and a stack of hundred dollar bills: fifteen of them, she counts, five times what she has in her savings account back in Sunnydale. She picks up the coffee cup and tips it, so that the small bit of liquid residue runs into her palm. It tastes like tea and a hint of something else that it takes her a moment to place.

Lethe's bramble. The handy little mindwipe drug, just enough to strip her of the last twenty-four hours.

Serves her right, she supposes. Somehow, by somebody, the player got played.

And isn't that how it goes? _What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas._

Willow just hopes that she had a good time. There hasn't been nearly enough of that to go around.


	3. Mansion on the Hill

_There's a place out on the edge of town, sir. . ._

 

Willow is right about one thing.

If this were a movie, they would end the night rolling naked in the money they've won. They would wake up in the morning, magically recovered from mutual hangovers (Willow seemed to think that chasing Tanqueray with wine was a good idea; they soon determined that it wasn't). They would drive off together with Connor – whose absence during the evening's triumph would require no explanation – break into the well-stocked and conveniently empty home of a rich man, where they would lay low until the trouble blew over.

Of course, if it were a movie, they would eventually end up driving into the Grand Canyon.

It isn't a movie. Wesley uses a mystical drug to erase the last twenty-four hours from Willow's memory, then leaves her with a small cut of their ill-gotten gains, and drives off the strip to the sketchy shotgun house he rented for the night, no questions asked, where Justine Cooper is chained to a bed. He pulls off her gag and she spits in his face.

"Hi honey," says Wesley. "I'm home."

"Where the hell have you been? I fucking need to piss."

No, nobody's putting this in a movie. They might put it on a ratings-challenged drama on some fourth place network, after which the show would soon be cancelled, and executives would be fired. Wesley shakes his head. Maybe it's just as well he's leaving. He's clearly been in Los Angeles too long.


	4. Johnny 99

_Now I ain't sayin' that makes me an innocent man  
But it was more 'n all this that put that gun in my hand_

 

Justine is certain about one thing. Wesley Wyndam-Pryce is one crazy fuck.

She used to think Holtz was crazy – and, all right, maybe he is. But Holtz is crazy for a reason. He's the kind of crazy she can understand. If Holtz were in Wesley's place, he would have killed her and dumped her body miles ago. That she would have understood; she had put a knife to Wesley's throat. She had asked for it.

Instead, Wesley went out of his way to find this abandoned place, tie her to the bed, and disappear for hours.

Now he comes back and makes jokes."

"Where the hell have you been?" she says. "I fucking need to piss."

He wipes spittle from his face with the back of his hand, steps away from her and rocks on his heels.

"So?" With an arched eyebrow. "What's stopping you?"

She thrashes against the bonds. Wesley reaches into his belt and pulls out the knife Justine tried to use on him. She thinks he's going to do it at last, so she kicks as well as she can, screams every curse word that comes into her throat; she's not going to die like an animal. At least, not like a nice one.

Wesley cuts the ropes tying her to the head and foot of the bed. He steps quickly back with the knife in front of him, and pulls back his coat, too, so she can see the gun on his hip. When he nods down the hallway, she realizes he's not going to undo the handcuffs or leg shackles. She swears she'll fight him more when she has the chance, but she's not lying. She really does need to piss.

He stops behind her, at the door of the small, squalid bathroom. He doesn't close the door, and she keeps cursing as she wriggles out of her jeans and onto the toilet. Wesley concedes by making a three-quarter turn, so he's only half looking her way. "Don't flatter yourself there's anything I want to see."

Physical need overcomes any dignity she has left, and she lets the stream go into the water.

"You held it," Wesley muses. "So you must have figured I would come back."

"Oh, I knew you'd want the pleasure of cutting my throat. You wouldn't just leave me to starve." She works her way back into her jeans, then shuffles back toward him. She's always got an eye out to see when he'll let his guard down, but this isn't a good time. His eyes are wild, and his motions are jerky, like he might be hopped up on something. He takes out the gun and points it to the living room. The whole place smells like dirt and piss. She doesn't bother to scream because she knows this kind of house, this kind of neighborhood; the reason Wesley chose it is that, if anyone happens to hear her, they won't care. "I knew you'd come back for the kid," she grunts. "Though it hasn't made a damn noise; that thing you left it with probably ate it."

"Not at all –" Wesley gestures, and she walks into the kitchen in front of him. Under the flickering fluorescent light, a short, fur-covered creature is rocking the baby. Justine hears a gurgling, clicking noise, and realizes it comes from Wesley. The creature responds with its own series of gurgles. It looks up from Wesley to Justine and she swears that, if not for the intense yellow eyes, it could pass for a walking Furby doll. "K'Har demons actually have a slumber-inducing effect on small children." Wesley sounds like a psychotic tour guide. "Combined with their nonthreatening appearance and capacity for following orders –" He gurgles at the creature again, and it hands the baby over. "Makes them ideal as substitute childcare providers."

"So long as you never feed them after midnight, hmmm?" Justine grumbles.

He ignores her, makes another noise at the demon, and says, "She's going to tie you to the chair there now. Don't make any sudden moves, as they're also deceptively strong. Particularly in defense of their wards." In Wesley's arms, Connor begins to stir. "Who's been a good boy?" Wesley croons. "I'll tell you a secret, little boy, your daddy went and got himself _rich_."

"Oh, you're the daddy now?" Justine sneers. "Angel's going to love finding that out. Especially your idea of a good babysitter. Oww!" She swats at the thing, which is tying her legs very tightly. It swats back and bares a convincing set of teeth.

"Now now." Wesley doesn't miss a beat. "I was minded by a K'Har myself, as a child. They were quite the rage with Watchers' Council wives in the seventies. I was much fonder of mine than of any of my governesses. They're quite tractable. The demons I mean; English spinsters are another matter." He flashes a crazy-smile at Justine. "So you see, there are advantages to being reared by a workaholic, mentally absent father and self-absorbed hypochondriac mother who never wanted children."

"You have some serious issues with your upbringing."

"Do you think?" he says lightly. "Oh, and Angel's not going to find out." He calls to the demon again; it tests Justine's bonds. Satisfied they are secure, Wesley sets Connor in the babyseat on the counter, and gestures to the K'Har. The Furby-thing waddles over to him, chirping all the while. When it reaches Wesley, he takes it by the hair, spins it around, and pulls the knife across its throat. The thing doesn't gag or struggle, just falls onto the floor.

"Jesus!" Justine gasps and lurches against her bonds. "You said it was friendly."

"Yes. Friendly, loving, and utterly without guile or deception. In other words –" He steps over the body and runs the knife under water. "Completely incapable of keeping a secret. Which is why they eventually fell out of fashion among the posh set. They're hardly ever used domestically anymore." He turns to Justine, thumbing the knife. "Which makes me wonder exactly what the man who sold her to me thought I was going to do with her." He shrugs. "Viva Las Vegas, I suppose."

Justine can't take her eyes off the knife. "And that's what you're going to do to me."

Wesley lets out an exasperated sigh. "No, Justine. As you've no doubt observed, I've had a thousand chances to kill you by now and haven't used them. What I'm going to do –" He turns back to the tap. "Is give you a drink of something that will put you to sleep and utterly erase your memory of the last forty-eight hours. By the time you wake up and piece things together. . ."

"You'll be in Nebraska."

"So to speak. Of course –" He takes out a small pot and fills it with water, "I've never actually tested such a large dose on a human subject. It might end up erasing all your memories, permanently; perhaps damage your frontal lobe to such an extent that you lose the capacity to form new ones. The technique is not as precise as, say, a butcher knife. . ."

"And what if I won't drink it?" Justine demands. "Then the knife?"

"Then –" Wesley sets a pot of water on the stove and turns up the heat. "No, I think I skip the knife, put a bullet in your brain, strip off your clothes, bash out your teeth and cut off your fingers so the body can't be identified and – well, assuming anybody ever finds you, the LVPD has another dead hooker on its hands." He muses. "I wonder how long it would take Grissom and the CSI team to crack that one?"

"Those are my choices? Forget this ever happened, or die?"

"Is that such a very hard decision?"

"No." Then Justine breathes deeply, considers the implications of offering her services to a crazy man, and remembers it wouldn't be the first time. "I've got another option for you."


	5. State Trooper/Highway Patrolman

_License, registration, I ain't got none; But I got a clear conscience about the things that I've done..._

Crossing the Montana border, Wesley looks in the passenger seat at Justine and figures, not for the first time, that he must be crazy.

Of course, everything she proposed back in Nevada made a certain sense.

_"I don't want you getting caught any more than you do. There will be a lot of people looking for you and that baby, and the only one I want finding you is Holtz."_

_"So what?"_

_"So, no matter how low you lay, people are going to see you. And a guy like you doesn't blend. You don't think people are going to remember James Bond driving across the country with a baby in tow?"_

_"I still don't follow," he said, although he was starting to. _

_"Man and a woman with a kid, who's gonna look twice? I can do the talking. And I know how to blend."_

_"And you also know how to cut my throat in my sleep."_

_"If you don't think you can handle me –"_

They've been driving for four days, and they've reached an uneasy truce. He still has the weapons close to hand, and he ties her up at night, when coffee and uppers won't carry him anymore, and he's forced to stop for sleep. But mostly, he drives and she plays with the radio, and he doesn't tell her where they're going. He doesn't trust her at all, of course. He never takes his eyes off her, and he still has the Lethe's Bramble in his pocket. He'll do the spell and leave her somewhere, eventually, when she least expects it. But for the time being, he can see the advantage.

Although, as the supposedly maternal one, she could be more help while the baby is screaming. "Jesus, Wesley! Can you shut the damn thing up? What's wrong with him?" She's turned around in the seat, trying to force the pacifier into Connor's mouth.

"I don't know," he snaps, "I can't imagine why he's immune to your gentle touch."

"Oh, you're one to fucking talk," Justine snaps, "You haul him around like a sack of potatoes half the time."

"I do not!" Wesley turns to look at the baby and loses control of the wheel for a second. Even though there's no one else on the highway, he swears guiltily, then over corrects and swerves over the middle line."

"Can you try to fucking drive?" Justine barks, then yells, "Shut up!" at Connor.

"Oh, that's gonna work."

Justine looks away from the baby, slumps in the seat, and says, "My sister would know what to do."

"Well maybe we should fucking call her!" He realizes too late what he's said – it was the sister's death that sent Justine down this road in the first place – and he thinks she really might lunge at him, even though he's driving seventy miles an hour. Then they both hear the sound at once, and they freeze.

"Holy Christ," says Justine, just as Wesley says, "Bloody hell."

Wesley looks in the rear view mirror, and Justine looks over her shoulder. "State trooper," she says, as he says, "Highway patrolman."

The lights and siren are going; they're the only car on the road. "Maybe we should run for it," says Wesley.

"To where?" Justine sputters. "Canada? That's only a five hour drive, and every cop in the state will be looking –"

"The car's in my name. Everything's in order."

"Except those stolen Idaho license plates?"

"We just moved to Boise from L.A," Wesley says, doing his best to flatten his vowels into an American accent. "We haven't gotten the paperwork straight." He starts to slow. "You're my wife, the baby's ours. Our names are our names. Don't get cute."

"Don't say 'bloody'," she says. "And what happens when he runs your license and pulls up a warrant for kidnapping?"

"There won't be a warrant." Wesley is pulling onto the shoulder. The trooper eases in behind them.   
"Angel won't go through the system."

"You're sure of that?"

No, of course he isn't. His hand goes to his side. "I've got a gun, don't I? Say anything and you're both dead, you and the cop."

"And you."

"Be that as it may."

"Oh, great plan." Justine presses her head into her hands. "You do the thinking, Butch. That's what you're good at."

"You got a better idea?"

"We're all dead and Angel gets the baby back, what could be better than that?" To his glower, she says, "I'm shutting up. This is all you."

Wesley lowers the window. In his cheerful, banal American voice, with an ingratiating American smile, he says, "Is there is a problem Officer. . ." Checking out the nametag. "Roberts?"

"You were all over the place back there." The trooper peers in. "You been drinking?"

"I wish." Wesley lays the smile on for all it's worth and nods at Connor. "Just tending to my son." Connor obliges him by starting to fuss. Wes gives an apologetic, "Kids."

The trooper looks straight past him to Justine. "Ma'am, is there a problem?"

Justine shrugs, avoids eye contact. "Like the man says, kid won't shut up."

Wesley reaches for his wallet. "You'd like to see my license and registration?"

Roberts backs up and his hand goes to his holster. "I'd like for both of you to keep your hands in sight and get out of the vehicle."

"I really don't see how that's necessary –" Wesley speaks slowly, fingers inching toward the gun under his jacket. _This is the moment,_ he thinks. The desperate moment that he's always known this desperate escape was carrying him towards, and in a second it will be over, maybe it will all be over and. . .

"Wesley don't!" Justine lunges across him and grabbed his hand. "This isn't what it looks like!"

Roberts has enough time to draw his weapon, and the last thing Wesley has time to think is that he hopes the man kills Justine too, because she sure as hell deserves. . ."It's not what it looks like, officer! He's my brother!"

*

They're standing outside now, hands on the roof of the car; Roberts has Wesley's gun ("It's registered!" he insists, though it isn't), and Justine is talking. "He's my brother. My idiot baby brother who thinks he's a fucking hero! I wanted to handle this all legally. Go through the system –"

"The system?" Wesley snaps. He turns his head back to the trooper. "Will you listen to her? This child's father _owns_ the fucking system. He doesn't give a goddamn about his flesh and blood. He just wants to hurt my sister. Justine, if you ever set foot in a courtroom, you'll never see your child again."

"This child's father is named Angel?" The officer frowns at Justine's license, "Angel Cooper?"

Justine freezes for a second, they haven't figured that part, and Wesley jumps in, "She doesn't _know_." He glowers at her. "She'll fuck him, God knows, but –"

"Nobody knows his real name," Justine interrupts. "He doesn't need a real name. People in 'L.A.' hear 'Angel' and –"

"Good God, where do you _find_ these people?" Wesley demands.

Justine sneers, "You're one to talk. Everybody knows you wish you could fuck him yourself."

"All right!" Roberts backs up, trains the gun on them, and signals them to turn around. "You're telling me that if I run your license, I'll find a warrant for anti-custodial kidnapping?"

"I'm telling you," says Wesley. "That the so-called father of my sister's child is a psychotic gangster fuck. I'm telling you the LAPD has a file on him that's five inches thick. I'm also telling you that he has people everywhere, and if you even _run_ that ID check somebody will find out."

Wesley has no doubt in his mind that this is true. Maybe Angel won't, but Wolfram &amp; Hart is looking for the baby too. If they get hauled into jail in Bump-of-the-Road Montana, they'll be dead by morning, and Connor will be sliced to pieces in a lab somewhere.

"So I can't check up your story." Roberts shakes his head. "Naturally. Tell me, is any of it true at all?"

Justine and Wesley eye each other. "Mostly," she says. "Some," he answers.

"So you just want me to let you go -- And why –" the trooper persists. "Give me one good reason why I should do that."

Justine shuffles. "Maybe you got kids? Maybe you got a pretty wife?" She levels her gaze at Wesley. "Maybe you got a no-good paranoid fuck of a little brother?"

The officer lets out a deep breath, and stares long and hard at them. "Okay," he says, "Here's what's gonna happen. You two are gonna stand here, and I'm gonna get in my car and drive away. And in five minutes, you'll get in your car and drive away. And then you're gonna find a different car, and different names, and you're going to forget you know mine." Roberts shoves Wesley's gun into his own belt. "And if this is really registered, you idiot, it's the first thing you should have got rid of."

Wesley and Justine stand silently, as the patrol car pulls away. As the taillights disappear, he turns to her. "Do you think he's really letting us go?"

"Well, let's just stand here and find out." They eyefuck each other for a long moment. Then Wesley collapses into laughter. Justine stares at him, as though finally truly convinced of his insanity, and then she smiles.

"Next time," he says, "Can you please inform me of our crazy cover story in advance?"

"Sorry that I had to think of it on the spot. Since your plan was, 'Get everybody shot.'" She smiles wider. "We were pretty good, weren't we?"

Wesley stares at her and says, "No! We were awful. We were the worst fugitives ever!"

"Speak for yourself, Butch Cassidy." Justine moves to the passenger seat and starts to get in. "I'm not the one who kept losing my American accent."

"I did not!" Wesley protests, getting behind the wheel.

She starts to do her seatbelt. "I almost had to say, 'This is my crazy brother from the school for fake British accents."

"Oh yes? And where did that crack about me and Angel come from?"

"Oh, you know. My wild imagination."

Wesley puts his hands on the wheel and says, "Justine, I swear. We were such incredibly bad liars, that trooper must have thought we were lunatics or escaped circus freaks." He shakes his head. "He let us go so he can just pretend it never happened."

"No. I don't think that's it." And now, Justine is no longer laughing. She looks at Wesley and says, "I think Officer Roberts has a brother."

_Now ever since we was young kids it's been the same come down/  
I get a call over the radio Franky's in trouble downtown/  
Well if it was any other man, I'd put him straight away/  
But when it's your brother sometimes you look the other way_


	6. Chapter 6

_ Now, mister, the day the lottery I win I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car  
again -- _

Lindsey still wears a suit to work, and he takes an odd comfort in that.

Some things don't have to change. His name is gone (he goes by Adam now; a little joke between the two of them). So is his home, his occupation, and the hands he gave up for Wolfram &amp; Hart –- the new one, which he doesn't trust anymore, as well as the old. It's a long way from Oklahoma to Rapid City, South Dakota; it's an even longer way from Los Angeles.

But Adam-who-was-Lindsey still wears a suit to work, still greets people with a smile, assures them he has their best interests at heart while secretly scheming ways to rob them blind. He still counts on his ability to talk anyone into anything. As a means of livelihood, it's not exactly working the land, the way his father and grandfather did. But then, where did working the land ever get them?

Selling used cars in Rapid City is not exactly the same thing as practicing law in the City of Angels. But it comforts Lindsey, as he checks his suit in the mirror, that he shares some points of contact with his old life.

He also knows that it's not forever.

*

These days, Lindsey sometimes forgets to be paranoid. He walks into a room without plotting avenues of escape. He opens a door without thinking ahead to what could be behind it, without anticipating bloody death.

It's a good feeling.

He's feeling good this Thursday morning, so even when he finds the office door open, and a woman standing inside, Adam-who-isn't-Lindsey anymore assumes one of the other showroom managers – Ed or Dan or Steve – came in early; probably Dan, the conniving SOB, trying to get a jump on him as the end of the month approaches. He doesn't let any of that annoyance into his eyes, though. He just holds out his one good hand, puts on a gleaming shyster's smile, and says, in an accent without the slightest trace of Muskogee County, "Hello, ma'am. My name is Adam Cole, and I hope you will give me the pleasure of helping you drive away in one of our brand new used cars."

The woman takes his hand, but she doesn't smile. She digs her thumb into his palm, and still all he's thinking is that if Dan didn't want him to have this sale, he shouldn't have walked off and left the customer alone. Then a man steps out of the inner office, and Lindsey notices these things in exactly this order: he's holding a baby, he isn't Dan, he has the bulge of a shoulder holster under his leather jacket, he hasn't shaved in a week.

"Hello, Lindsey," says the man, in a nondescript American accent that doesn't fit him, and finally Lindsey notes the last fact, which is that he knows this man already.

"Hello, Wesley."

*

Wesley guides Lindsey into the office. The woman, who Wesley never introduces, stays outside, in the tanklike room where customers pace, while Lindsey goes in and pretends to talk to a non-existent general manager. Even as he talks with Lindsey, Wesley's eyes never quite leave the woman.

"Congratulations," says Lindsey. He's not even being sarcastic. He went to enough weddings, promotion parties, and ritual sacrifices when he was with the firm, and old formalities die hard. "Strange choice of a honeymoon spot, if you don't mind my saying so."

"We need to disappear," says Wesley, as though it somehow answers Lindsey's observation. "From what I understand, you're quite good at that."

"The fact that you've found me undermines that observation just a little bit. Don't you think?"

"On the contrary, you were a bitch to find." Wesley stops for a moment to soothe the fussing child; then his eyes flicker out the door at the woman, and Lindsey realizes that she's not keeping lookout, as he originally thought. Instead, Wesley is keeping an eye on her. "I assure you," he continues, "Finding you required a very powerful locator spell, performed by a very skilled witch. And it was only possible because the magicks you used were so strongly focused on hiding you from Wolfram and Hart; often, such a concealement spell leaves a trace that can be detected by someone, not the target of the enchantment, who knows exactly what to look for. But I wouldn't worry; the trail was almost nonexistent when we found it a month ago. And more to the point – well, at this moment, no one's looking for you."

"And if they're looking for you?" Lindsey growls. "And you've led them here? How does that help any of us?"

"Good point. I suppose –" He leans down to kiss the infant's forehead, a picture of parental devotion, unruffled by interference from the outside world. Looking up, he smiles, "That gives you extra incentive to get the job well done."

"Look, I don't know what kind of idea you have about me. Look around." Lindsey points to the nameplate on the desk. "My name is Adam Cole. I sell used cars. What makes you think I still have connections to that world?"

"A lucky guess."

Lindsey's calm is practiced, from sitting through many a routine psychic scan at Wolfram and Hart. But Wesley isn't psychic; Lindsey doesn't have to clear his mind in order to lie, and so he lets himself think of Eve, her cryptic smile, her ever-youthful body and her assurances. _This will only be a little while, baby. Things are already in motion._ He could do what Wesley wants, easily enough, but that begs the question. "And supposing I could, why would I? Why do I care what happens to you and your son?"

"Because he's not my son. He's Angel's."

"But that's –" Lindsey stops before saying 'impossible,' because by now he should know better. And he has heard rumblings, from Eve. A miracle child -- but then, after shucking his belief in the Southern Baptist God around the age of ten, Lindsey has been preconditioned to disbelieve such tales. "So what? You think I'm the world's biggest Angel fan, so I just have to help his kid?"

Wesley shakes his head. "Exactly the contrary. Angel's the most dangerous one who will be looking for him, and you're one person I can count on not to help him out. And there's more." He holds the child up, giving Lindsey a good look at wide blue eyes.

Lindsey shuffles. "So he's cute? So what?"

"He's Darla's."

Now Lindsey looks in those eyes, and he sees the truth of Wesley's words. And he looks away. "And again I say. So what?"

"So – Look!" he orders, and Lindsey does. "Darla died to save this child. Can't you do bring yourself to do one small thing to honor that sacrifice?"

Lindsey answers before he thinks. "Yes," he says. "Yes, I can." Even as he speaks, Lindsey hears his own voice crack, and he knows he will help. "How did you know that would work?"

And Wesley smirks, the goddamn insufferable smile of a man who knows he's won. "Lucky guess."


	7. Open All Night

_Radio's jammed up with gospel stations   
Lost souls callin' long distance salvation  
Hey, mister deejay, woncha hear my last prayer   
Hey, ho, rock'n'roll, deliver me from nowhere_

Ten hours after leaving Lindsey, Wesley stands in the parking lot of something called a Bob's Big Boy, somewhere in South Dakota, giving money to a creature which -- due to the hooded sweatshirt pulled down past its hands, and the bandana covering the lower half of its face -- he is inclined not to think of as man. Justine stands two steps back, holding Connor, as Wesley examines the contents of a paper-wrapped parcel and manila envelope. The creature counts the money, and they close the deal with what Wes would think of as a handshake, if he were entirely certain that the gloved appendage was a hand.

"I'm driving away," the creature rasps. "Don't move for five minutes." So Wesley and Justine stand there as the taillights of the only car on the highway disappear. The enormous Big Boy statue, with its checkered pants and overalls, looms over them, and the red neon "OPEN ALL NIGHT" sign crackles in the dark. It ought to be absurd, except that it makes Wesley think of how this all started, talking to a hamburger, and this time around he can't bring himself to laugh.

"I want some fried chicken," Justine announces.

Wesley shoves the envelope and parcel under his jacket and reaches his arms out for Connor. "Wait in the car," he tells her.

Justine rolls her eyes, surrendering the baby; Wes walks back with her, unlocks the passenger door of the old Dodge on which Lindsey cut them a "sweetheart deal," and pockets the keys.

"Oh Jesus, I'm gonna drive off?" He nods at the open door, and she slides in, "You at least ought to let me drive the next shift. You keep your foot on the clutch like my dead Aunt Shir. . ." He shuts the door on her further protests.

The girl behind the counter wears a tag that reads, "WANDA," which isn't promising, but she lays a pair of deep brown eyes on him, and he decides that neither the name nor the boxy candy-stripe shirt does her justice. He orders some chicken and a pint of milk to go. Wanda responds with a smile like a breath of fresh air on the lunar landscape of these monotonous Badlands. "Adorable," she says.

Wesley, who hasn't looked twice at a woman since he left Willow in Vegas, raises a hand to his unshaven chin and says, "I was going for manly, but. . ." Her eyes travel down, and he realizes she meant the baby.

He's been on the road too long, and comforts himself that Lindsey has provided the equipment for a smooth landing. There are just a few more arrangements to make; he remembers his words to Lindsey. _"I need new names and papers for me and the baby. I'll take care of the girl myself."_ Now it's just a question of how to do it with minimum mess.

Stepping outside with a baby under one arm and the Bob's bag in his free hand, he is almost too wrapped up in the future to notice a large figure, a man with a thick beard and a motorcycle jacket, who definitely wasn't there when he went inside.

"Get a little lost?" asks a raspy voice. Wesley doesn't see any more cars or even bikes, and it suddenly occurs to him to wonder why a place like this on an abandoned highway would be open all night, anyway.

"Let me get my wallet. I don't want any trouble." He drops the food and reaches inside his coat. The only advantage he has is surprise, so he plays the clueless tourist, hoping he can get to his stake.

Wesley detects at least two other vampires in his peripheral vision, and he's betting on a whole nest, if not a colony. Wanda's voice rises behind him. "Save the little one for me!" The bearded vamp lunges; Wesley can't get his weapon without dropping the baby, so he instinctively hunches down to shield Connor, and closes his eyes thinking this is an idiotic way for a trained Watcher to die.

The vamp's war cry turns into a scream of shock, followed by a voice yelling, "Keys!" Justine is standing where the vamp was, dust swirling in front of her. "There's more, give me the goddamn keys!" Without thinking, he tosses them, then straightens and finally wields his stake.

"Back up!" he barks at Wanda. She raises her hands, and her lip starts to tremble. He walks backwards to the car, with the stake in front of him. More vampires have emerged from the shadows but they all stand in a circle away from him. Wesley guesses that they aren't used to prey who can defend themselves, and that, like most large vampire gangs, they're cowardly and unorganized, each hoping someone else will make the first move and assume all the risk. "Back!" he repeats. Justine screeches up, pulling open the rear passenger door and yells, "GET IN!" Wes jumps and rolls in the back seat, as well as he can with the baby in his arms. Justine slams the door but pulls down the window and points her stake at Wanda. "You!" she barks. The young vamp is still shaking, as Justine points at the bag that Wesley had to drop. "Give me the fucking chicken."

"Justine!" Wesley protests, but she waits for Wanda to throw the bag in the window, then screeches away. "No use letting them think we're scared," she says. "Besides --" She reaches for the bag. "I'm fucking starved!"

"Justine!" Wesley gasps, as she jumps a curb to get on the highway, "The baby!" He's still bent over with Connor clutched to his chest although, out of what must be sheer perversity, the child that often screams at a lullaby, is babbling with apparent glee.

"The baby was almost fast food back there!" she snaps. "Now, let's see what THIS baby can do." She floors the accelerator. "Not that we'd know with you driving, but there are some horses under this hood."

"Justine!" She's only getting faster, and now the flat empty highways work to their advantage. Wesley gives up on trying to put the baby in the car seat, and just doubles over, as he did when the vampires were attacking.

"Ninety-eight," Justine sings out, "ninety-nine, one hundred – Chrysler don't make 'em like this anymore." She pulls a drumstick from the bag and holds it out to him. "Want some?"

She cackles with excitement, and he peers into the front seat long enough to determine that she has, as he feared, taken her hands off the wheel. "Justine! I hardly think we're being followed." He glances out of the back window, just in case, but indeed the highway is as empty as it has been for most of the day. He takes the chicken, not because he wants it, but so she'll hold the wheel again. "Hands!" he barks.

Justine puts one on top of the steering wheel and uses the other to turn up the radio. "Goddamn gospel stations!" she snaps at a perfectly innocent church choir. As she hits the tuner dial, the car lurches. Wesley shouts, Connor gurgles, but Justine quickly corrects, then howls in victory as the radio stops on Jimi Hendrix singing "Purple Haze." "Hey hey, rock and roll!" she whoops.

"Pull – over!"

It's a good seven miles before she obeys him, pulling into the empty lot of an abandoned RV-campground.

"You could have got us killed," Wesley scolds, once the baby is properly fastened in.

"Your friend set us up," she shoots back, but finally surrenders the wheel.

Wesley starts to drive further from the highway, looking for a place under shade trees. "He's not my friend. But I don't think he did. If those vamps had known what that baby is, we would have been in for a lot more than a standard chew 'em up."

"You willing to bet on that?"

Of course he isn't. "Maybe it's just as well if Lindsey thinks we're dead."

Justine shakes her head, "We gotta ditch the car then. It's the best way to trace us." She yawns. "I think I saw a bus stop at the Texaco a mile or so back."

He nods. "I like the way you think," adding, with a smile, "Nice work back there." He presses her shoulder and says, "Let's just sleep here, we can figure something in the morning." He hands her a bottle of water, which she gulps in satisfied exhaustion.

"That's a good idea," Justine murmurs. She slumps against him, then opens her eyes and looks up at him. "You weren't so bad yourself, you know. As long as we're going to be together?" She raises her lips to brush his chin.

He looks down for a moment, presses her cheeks, and pushes her away. "Stop thinking like a slave, Justine." He takes the bottle from her. "Anyway, your part in this is over."

Her eyes widen as she looks at the bottle and grabs her throat. "You fucking poisoned me, you –" She starts to lunge at him, but her limbs are already getting heavy. She slumps back in the seat.

"Calm down," he says, as though she has a choice. "What's in there will only put you to sleep until morning. What's in here –" And he takes the last Lethe's Bramble from his coat, and breaks it in half. "Will make sure you wake up and don't remember anything. When I get safely away from here, in a week or so, I'll burn the other half of this. Then you'll only be missing the last hour or so. And if Lindsey wants to believe –" But he stops, because she's already passed out.

Wesley slips out of the driver's side and lets her lie across the seat. The last thing he does, before leaving with Connor to catch the bus to the nearest city, is press the car key into her hand. He had asked Lindsey to register it in the name "Justine Cooper," with her Los Angeles address. That should give her enough of an identity to find her way back to her old life. And maybe forgetting for a while will be good for her.

Besides, she deserves to keep the car. She really knows how to drive it.


	8. My Father's House

_I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart  
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts   
_ \-- "My Father's House"

The house hasn't changed.

Even by the moonlight, Wesley can see that.

The house never changes. It presents the same high narrow windows, the same imposing façade, the same iron-edged door. Wesley presses the baby close to his side and raises a hand to knock when it swings open before him, with the same slow creaking.

"You're late." Roger Wyndam-Pryce lowers piercing eyes at his son.

"I've been occupied," Wesley answers, slipping past him into the great hall, "In assuring that I wasn't followed."

The old man shakes his head. "You never did take the trouble to attend to the time." He points to a grandfather clock beside the door.

Wesley steps around the man to study the numbers on the face of the clock. His own blue eyes, and his father's look back. "There are many events in the womb of time," Wesley murmurs, "which will be delivered." Iago's words, from _Othello._ An old game. He wonders if the old man remembers.

"There you are wrong, son," Roger shakes his head. "Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders." _As You Like It_. Wesley thinks. He turns; Roger holds out his arms.

Wesley chooses an easy answer for a difficult action. "Each man in his time plays many parts." His eyes stay locked with his father's as he lowers the infant into the old man's grasp.

"Well done," Roger murmurs, looking down at the third pair of blue eyes. "Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine, nor age so eat up my invention. . ."

_Much Ado_, Wesley thinks, just as a low, growling voice breaks across the lobby. "And yet, you see – the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. Which is also to say. Time is the fire in which we burn."

Wesley freezes at the voice of the man he believed he had left in Los Angeles. "The first quotation," Wesley says, "is clearly from _Twelfth Night_. And as for the second –" He turns to face Daniel Holtz. "You're either referring to twentieth-century American poetry, or one of the more recent _Star Trek_ films. Neither of which you have the least business to know." As he speaks, Wesley reaches for his gun. Yet it's not on his hip. He remembers he is in England, that possessing a sidearm is against the law. Still he thinks he might have hidden it under his jacket and yet –-

He merely stands as his father crosses the room and hands the child to Holtz. "No!" Wesley calls. "Father!"

"Now, don't make a fuss, son," his father scolds. "You were late. I made it very clear there would be consequences."

"Father!" Wesley wants to run toward them, yet his feet seem rooted to the stones of the floor. "Father, I didn't tell you my secrets -– we didn't come all the way across the ocean to give the child to this man!"

And now another voice, at first unconnected from a body. "You're right, Wes." Angel steps from the shadows, arms outstretched. "You came to give him to me." The vampire takes Roger's arm in a quick, casual embrace. "Thanks, Rog."

Wesley stares in horror, "Angel, we don't call him –- Father, you don't invite a vampire in your home."

"Is that true, son?" Roger asks. "I was under the impression you had quite nearly been bedfellows, these past two years."

"Quite nearly," Holtz agrees. The three men all nod at each other, and take turns admiring the baby.

"This doesn't make any sense!" Wesley cries. "You're all enemies. I'm getting away from all of you. You see –-" He pleads now, eyes moving to each of them in turn. "There was a prophecy."

"Oh no." Holtz shakes his head.

"Son," says Roger, "It's quite obvious that you read it wrong."

Wesley turns finally, pleadingly, to Angel. The vampire's eyes shift their natural brown, to yellow, and back again, as he hisses out, "See, Wes, the prophecy was false."

*

Wesley wakes, bolts upright, feels his body soaking in sweat, cold in the air of the small hotel room. "Dream," he speaks out loud. "Dream. Dream dream dream dream dream." He puts a hand on his forehead, and laughs at himself. And yet. . .

Yet the words from the dream hang in the air. His father: _You read it wrong_ and Angel, _The prophecy was false._ Suddenly, instead of shaking in panic, he is laughing, laughing the way he did back at the hotel, when he knew everything would be all right, the moment before the earthquake came and threw the world back into confusion. His hand is already on the bedside phone, dialing, before he can think whether he is calling his father or Angel. Only then do Wesley's eyes move to the other side of the bed, the side rumpled down from the weight of a small form. The side of the bed that now lies empty.

Wesley drops the phone.

He is alone in the bed.

There is no baby.

"Connor! Jesus!" He scrambles to look on the floor by the bed. It's their first night alone, and he was too tired to do anything but lie down and settle the already sleeping child next to him. But now the baby is nowhere to be found and an infant couldn't have merely walked away and Justine is gone but. . .

From the corner, he hears a child's contented gurgle, then a voice. "You worry too much, Wes. That's how this whole damn thing got started."

And Angel steps out of the shadows.

Wesley dives under his pillow for a stake, holds it out demanding. "How did you --?"

"Public accommodation. No invite needed" Angel calmly sits on the edge of the bed, and reaches a finger to touch the nose of a babbling Connor. "You're a good little boy, yes." He smiles up at Wesley, then reaches out and slaps his knee through the covers. "Don't worry so much."

"Angel –" Wesley gasps, and then he begins to put it together. "I read the prophecy wrong."

"Yup!" Angel keeps playing with the baby's nose.

"But –You're not angry."

"What? Nah." Angel raises his eyes, and gives Wesley the clear untroubled smile that is such a rare and yet such a beautiful thing. "I know why you did it."

"You," Wesley stammers, "You do? Angel, I'm not exactly sure that I do. So if you think you know what you think you know maybe you should --"

"Shhh!" Angel raises a finger and presses it to Wesley's lips. Wesley lowers the stake and stares, trembling. "It's pretty damn obvious, wouldn't you say?" Angel leans in, as though to tell a secret, and before Wesley can understand, Angel is kissing him. A full kiss, hard and deep and forceful, and even if Wesley should want to protest, he would find it difficult, and as the kiss grows longer and warmer – _should it be this warm?_ he wonders. _I always thought a vampire should taste more cold, and isn't it odd that I've never kissed one before, but then when would I? It wasn't exactly part of standard training for Watchers though Angel is good at it, and maybe it should be_ \-- he knows that he does not want to protest.

Still, it feels odd, with Connor pressed between them, and sure enough the child begins to cry. "Better deal with that," Angel apologizes, and he pulls away.

Wesley sits back, while Angel fusses with the child, and Wesley's lips still burn, and he feels he should speak, but doesn't know how to put words on this feeling, and so he remembers something that he ought to ask. "What was it supposed to say?"

Angel doesn't look up from adjusting Connor's blanket. "What?"

"The prophecy," Wesley prompts. "What was it supposed to say?"

"Oh." Angel shakes his head, as though it couldn't be less important. "The father will kill the son."

"Right." Wesley is more confused than ever. "But you said I mistranslated it."

"I never said that." Angel shakes his head and starts to bounce the child against his knee. "I said you read it wrong."

"I don't get it," says Wesley. "I certainly want to believe you, but how could I read that wrong? It seems pretty straightforward. Is it not about Connor?"

"Oh yeah," Angel answers. "It's definitely about Connor. But think about it. He's not mine anymore. He's yours." He raises the child to his shoulder, and rocks it against him, then pulls close to Wesley. "If you think about it, that changes everything."

Connor is pressed between them now, still wailing. The crying grows louder as Angel moves closer. Wesley's mouth is still warm from the kiss, but he can't shake the thought of what Angel is telling him. "I'm still confused, Angel. I don't understand how it solves anything at all."

"Oh, I didn't say solves. I said changes. See, Wes, you read it all wrong. I don't kill Connor." Angel licks his lips as he speaks the last words. "You do."

*

For the second time Wesley sits bolt upright. He's still cold, and his heart is beating fast, but he doesn't do anything idiotic like pinch himself to make sure he's really awake. He knows he's really awake, because he's taking the time to think about. Also because the tattoo Lindsey helped him put on his shoulder is itching like hell and, more to the point, the baby is screaming beside him. It would take a stronger man to dream through that.

He picks the child up and holds it to his shoulder, rocking back and forth. "Weird dream, kid," Wesley says softly. He gets to his feet and starts to pace the floor with the child, and it's only then he realizes he's shaking. Once he's aware, his knees gets worse, and he has to sit down on the bed. He sees spots of water on the child's head, recognizes his own tears, and finally surrenders. Justine is gone; he has no one to be tough or hard or strong for, and so he buries his eyes in the baby's thin downy growth of hair, and lets himself cry. His chest shakes and vibrates against the child's, and the child cries harder, and the vibrations of each body flow into each other, and later Wesley will have no idea how long he sat there, holding the son of a man he probably loved, a man he betrayed and stole from, a man who, if all the plotting and running and lying of the last two months means anything, he will never lay eyes on again.

Then the baby stops. Then Wesley stops. He kisses the top of the small head. And then, of all things, he begins to laugh. Wesley lays the sleeping child down on the bed, and looks down at the delicate form, and he starts to laugh.

Because he knows what the dream means.

It doesn't mean that the prophecy is false, or that he has failed, that he wants to to back to his father, that he wants Angel to find him. No, the dream means that he has won. He has succeeded, he has gotten away with the child, and they are free.

And now that Wesley has won, the joke is entirely on him.

He never wanted to be a father. He starting saying so when he was quite a young man -- much to the annoyance of his mother, and to the detriment of several otherwise promising relationships with women who wanted their offspring to carry the Wyndam-Pryce name. He gave all the usual reasons: overpopulation, not wanting to bring a child into a world so clearly slated for destruction, the demands and duties of his chosen profession. What he really believed was that he had no hope of success, that he would make a regular mess of it, that he never wanted any human to look at him the way he looked at his own father, to pass judgment and see that he had failed. It was bad enough to know he could never please his father. He couldn't imagine the pain of disappointing a son.

And yet –-

Over the past weeks, Wesley has schemed and planned and lied and run his way around the country. He has effected a very impressive escape – and, in so doing, has cast off all of the relationships he could possibly have with other people, except for the one that he knows he never wanted.

He looks down at the sleeping child –- the boy no longer to be called Connor, he remembers, but 'Kyle', the utterly benign and forgettable name on the papers that Lindsey got for them. He wonders if his own father once cast eyes down on him, saw how easily the world could break such a creature. If, perhaps, the man weighed the rewards that could come from giving his heart to a person he didn't really know yet, when that gift might only bring pain. If, just maybe, his father decided to save himself from future grief by holding that love back.

Now, Wesley knows, he will never have the chance to ask.

He only knows that he has to be a different father than the father he had, and that he has absolutely no idea how to accomplish this.

"I'm afraid this is a bad deal for both of us, kid," Wes says gruffly. "Thirty-four years in the world, and I don't have a bloody clue. I got started off with kidnapping, cheating at cards, and dark magic. I'm going to move forward by lying to you as much as possible, and, in the best case scenario, you never find out." He lies down next to the boy whose name is now Kyle, the boy he must learn to think of as his own son. "Really, now," Wesley murmurs, falling asleep, for the first time in months, with a smile on his face. "There ought to be a handbook."


	9. Reason to Believe

i&gt;Struck me kind of funny; seemed kind of funny, sir, to me,  
Still, at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.   
[Full lyrics here](http://www.xs4all.nl/~maroen/engels/lyrics/reasonto.htm)

Wesley is rolling through a valley on U.S. 93, heading up to Flathead Lake in western Montana, when the Buick dies on him, once and for good. He has slowed down for an animal in the road, something he half-hopes is a bison. But it turns just a big cow, broken through somebody's fence. Wesley hits the brake and stares at the animal for a minute. She stares back. It's just a two-lane road, but he hasn't seen another car for miles. The animal isn't making any sudden moves – or any moves at all – so he decides to drive around it, into the opposite lane. _That's right, Pryce, live on the edge._ He tries not to think about Justine gunning the old Dodge over a midnight highway, and assures he'll think of nothing else.

Then he presses the gas, and nothing. He turns the key, tries the clutch. No cough, no grunt. Nothing. The baby starts fussing, and Wes groans. "Cow says moo. Pretty, right?" The baby screams. Wesley finds a toy bear and a pacifier, and to his relief, the child is content to chew them. The Wesley puts the car into reverse, and gets out to push it onto the shoulder.

As soon as he's out of the car, the cow wanders onto the opposite shoulder and starts to graze. "Thanks for nothing," Wesley groans.

May is turning into June, and alhough dusk is approaching, the plains still carry the memory of the day's warmth. Heat rises from the gravel and even the setting sun scorches the back of his neck. He swears and pops open the hood. Wrestling with Angel's Plymouth has taught him a little about out of date American motors, but he was more than happy to cede such duties to Gunn and, later, Fred. The hazard lights were working, so it probably wasn't the battery but other than that -– he stares at the chaos of pipes and knobs and cogs or whatever the bloody hell they are, and so far he's battled demons and vengeful time travelers and their knife-happy minions and his own bouts of crippling self-doubt, but he has absolutely no idea what to do about this vehicle. So Wesley just stands, and he stares, and lets a lot of time and a few cars go by before he hears tires on the shoulder behind him.

Wesley straightens but doesn't turn. A large dirt-spattered pickup has pulled from the opposite lane and stopped, ten yards away. A woman gets out of the cab, hands in her pockets. She walks to the front of her truck, then stops. Wesley turns to face her and her eyes run up and down him. "Like if you stood there long enough," she says, "that dog get up and run?"

"You got a better suggestion?" he snaps. He remembers the flat American accent just in time. Lindsey McDonald had laughed at him about his occasional slips. _Don't worry,_ Lindsey whispered in a thick Southern twang that took Wesley by surprise, _'Fore long, you won't even have to think about it._

"Maybe." She steps forward and points at him. "Open your jacket."

He obeys, asking, "Why --?"

She stretches out a hand. "Just let me hold onto that." She must have seen the shoulder holster as he bent over the car. Wesley takes the gun out by the muzzle and removes the clip.

"Self-defense. Can't be too careful." He pockets the round, and starts to put the gun back.

She still holds her hand out. "No," she says. "I can't." So he lets her have the unloaded gun. She sticks it inside her own jacket – denim, like the cowgirl jeans she's wearing – and he sees the gleam of what's probably a Lady Smith &amp; Wesson strapped to her own hip. "Sorry." She steps close to the car, "But I don't exactly believe in handsome strangers who need my help. What's the problem?"

"Well, if I knew that. . ." he sighs. Then she looks up, gives him a crooked grin, and he's suddenly re-evaluating his own belief system. She's slim and tall, with long black hairitied in a ponytail behind her back. He would have guessed she was older than him, at first, but closer up, he isn't sure. Her eyes are a deep grey-blue; he sees lines there but he doesn't know how to judge what happens to skin under years of work in the sun of these plains. _Beautiful strangers who want to help and carry guns under their coats,_ he wonders,_ How do I feel about them?_

Then the baby's voice erupts from the back of the car. The woman stares at him, then at the seat where the child is now screaming. "You've got to be kidding," she says, but Wesley has already gone to pick him up.

He comes out, soothing and carrying the child. The baby pops a thumb in his mouth and rests against Wesley's jacket. "Does this make the entire situation seem less threatening?"

She shakes her head. "Just weirder," and leans over the car. "My bet's on the distributor. That's a five hundred dollar part assuming you can find one for this junk heap." She kicks the bumper. "You might be able to find something at the salvage yard in Big Arm, but I'm betting you'll have to catch a ride to Polson. And it still might take them a few days to order the part." She puts a hand on one hip, leans to look at him, and sighs.

"What?" he asks.

"Well, I can't just leave you here with a baby, can I, with the night coming on?"

"You at least ought to give my gun back."

She lets out along breath, seeming unamused by his deadpan. "Are you going anywhere in particular?"

He shrugs. "No destination in mind. I thought we might try to rent a place up by the lake for the summer, while I try to sort out. . ." He lowers his voice, lets in just a bit of a tremor. "Kyle's mother passed away. There's been a period of adjustment and –" He's going for 'emotionally damaged widower,' a situation that won't inspire nosy questions in a part of the world where people are supposed to like their privacy.

She cuts him off. "Are you good for anything?"

"Sorry?"

"As long as we're in this absurd situation, I don't suppose there's the slightest chance you know a damn thing about horses."

For a second, Wesley forgets to lie, he's so excited at being able to give an affirmative answer. "Why yes, it happens I took several ribbons in dressage. . ."

"Dressage?" she blurts. "Dress_age_, as in, you wear a funny hat and the horse walks around in circles?"

"Well, I'd hardly. . ." Then he looks down at his leather jacket and laughs. "I guess it doesn't exactly go with the Marlboro Man thing I'm trying to do here."

"Not so much." She shakes her head. "So have you ever actually been in a Western saddle?" A smile creeps onto her face as she slams the hood shut and leans against it. "That's not a come-on, by the way."

_Too bad,_ he thinks, before remembering he's a grieving widower. And, thanks to a few weekends in Santa Barbara with Virginia Bryce, he is able to say, "Yes, I know the fundamentals." She raises an eyebrow, and he says, "I'm a fast learner."

"Well," she nods slowly as she speaks, as though she has to confirm her own words to herself. "I run a little ranch about thirty minutes west of here, over on the rez. I should have a bed for you and your son tonight. And if you turn out to be any good at anything, I just might have a permanent place, and some work."

"Thank you, I –"

"No promises," she adds.

"Of course," Wesley says, "just let me –" He moves to the car for his bags, then remembers something obvious, and offers her his hand. "Sorry, I'm – Harding. This is Kyle and I'm John. Harding." For the first time he speaks the names from the papers Lindsey gave them, hopes they sound like he believes in them.

"Ah." The woman gives a full smile, at last, and says, "Wesley."

"Sorry?!"

"The dangerous outlaw? John Wesley Harding?" She whistles a snatch of music. "Bob Dylan song? Oh, don't tell me you've never –"

"Oh! Yes, of course. Long day." Thinking he should have murdered Lindsey McDonald when he had the chance. "He was, what was it, 'Never known to hurt an honest man.' "

She smiles. "So should I be worried?" Holding out an arm she steps closer. "Can I carry something for you, John Wesley?"

He makes a snap decision, hoping he'll be able to live with it for however long he needs. "Jack. People call me Jack." He likes the sound, very Marlboro Man. "And I'm sorry, you?"

"Take a guess." She throws a heavy bag over her shoulder like it's nothing and backs toward the truck. "Only, instead of Dylan, think Bruce."

It takes him a second to say, "Springsteen?" and then, not being very well-versed, grabs at 'Born to Run,' checks through the chorus and guesses, "Wendy?"

"Hardly." She wrinkles her nose, and now he can see she is young, maybe not even thirty. "Try," she says, enuciating each syllable, "Ro-sa –li –ta."

Wesley (or can he really be a 'Jack'?) decides to leave the carseat for later, hoists the bag of Connor/Kyle's things in one arm, and cradles the baby in the other. Following the woman to her truck, he calls, "You must be joking."

"Oh no." She shakes her head and smiles. "My father had absolutely no irony when it came to Bruce." Rosalita gives a thoughtful look at the setting sun. "Of course, neither did I. Seeing as I ran off with a biker when I was sixteen."

"Ah," he smiles, sliding into the passenger seat, then risks a half-flirty look at her. "Lucky biker."

Rosalita turns the key. "He didn't think so. I guess I should mention. It's just me and the girls. There hasn't been a man around the house since the cat died." She looks down at the baby. "The girls can help with Kyle, until you work out something more permanent."

"Girls?" He repeats; he has a flash that he might be walking into the best little whorehouse in Montana.

"Annie's fourteen, Maggie's ten." She fastens a hard mother-bear look on him. "It should go without saying, but you don't want to be the man who messes with them."

"Yes!" he says, "Of course, I wouldn't –"

"I know you wouldn't," she says, "But I had to say it."

"Of courses." He looks down at the child in his lap. "We all do the things we need to do to protect our children." He catches her looking at him, from the corner of his eye. It occurs to him that she doesn't believe a goddamn word of his story, and also, that she doesn't particularly care. She's the type of woman who will judge what she sees of a man without wasting too much thought on where he comes from, or where he's going. And, right now, this is exactly what he needs. "Thank you for all this," he says. "Thank you so much . . . Rosalita."

"I've always favored Rosie." She pulls onto the road. "It smells of brown soap and beer." She looks up at him, then laughs. "So I guess this whole thing is pretty damn weird?"

He shrugs. "The baseline for weirdness in my life," he admits, "Is pretty high on a good day. Though, it's like you said – I'm not quite sure I believe in beautiful strangers who want to help me."

"Well," says Rosalita. "You know what the man says about that. At the end of every hard-earned day, people find some reason to believe."

So Jack Harding cradles his arms around his son Kyle, and drives into the sunset with a beautiful stranger.


End file.
